by Sean Boling
Chapter Ten: Candice
The town square was the feature that had sold her on the idea she could be happy there. She had never lived in a town with a bandstand and a pond at its center. Neither was large enough to host much in the way of entertainment or wildlife, squeezed into one square block as they were, but small wedding parties appreciated the photogenic backdrop each provided, and children liked to play on one and feed ducks at the other, at least until they reached a certain age.
“What a fitting symbol that small pond is now that I look back on the move,” Candice said as she and Isaiah sat on a bench watching Zoey feed the ducks from a long bag of sliced sandwich bread that she was about halfway through.
“Something about a big fish?” he encouraged her.
“If there were any in there,” it dawned on her. “I guess it’s only half a symbol. But if there were any fish, they’d be my ex-husband. That was his whole reason for moving here. To come in and be a big shot.”
“Make a big splash,” Isaiah added.
Candice fake-laughed while he waved to an invisible adoring audience.
Zoey heard her Mom, saw Isaiah waving, and darted toward them while twirling the bag of bread above her head like a lasso.
“No, no!” Candice assured her. “False alarm. Not waving at you, honey!”
Zoey imitated the sound of screeching brakes as she stopped, pulling the bag into her stomach as though catching a football, then sauntered back to the anxious team of ducks.
“The energy,” Isaiah shook his head. “That’s why I don’t teach second grade.”
“I’m sure you could do it.”
“I did once.”
“Really?”
“Once.”
“How did it go?”
“Tell me more about your husband,” he smiled.
“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”
“I’m sure your husband wasn’t, either.”
“You really want to change the subject that badly,” she nodded playfully. “Okay, then. Well…he was more like this whole place, come to think of it. The little town square is cute. So cute it’s easy not to notice how many closed businesses surround it. And all the new development is around the outside, all the money sunk into expanding the city limits instead of focusing on what you’ve got. Wow…look at me riding this metaphor into the ground.”
“I’m impressed.”
“It’s all that time in your class. Even if I am supposedly twenty years too old for it.”
“Supposedly? Have you been lying about your age?”
“I mean,” she laughed, “I can’t believe how much I’ve learned from a sixth grade class. It seems like something I should be taking, on my own, and paying for it.”
“At your age.”
“At my age.”
“Whatever that is.”
She laughed again and pushed him.
“So what you’re saying is,” he picked up the earlier thread, “your husband put on some weight around the middle, around his outside…”
Her laughter grew.
“…and that represents the new houses on the edges of the city. Am I right?”
She made a buzzer sound to indicate an incorrect answer.
“You’re missing the part about focusing on what you have,” she said.
“I know, I know,” he assured her. “I hear you.”
“You know what I’m sayin’?” she imitated some of the kids in his classroom.
“I know what you’re sayin’,” he followed her lead, then transitioned into sincerity. “He was a nice, shiny ring that was crumbling in the middle.”
Candice really appreciated his attention, but as usual held the line at having her gratitude come across as affection. She was relieved to feel a call tremble in on her cell phone, as it provided further camouflage.
The screen read ‘Kimberly Althouse’.
She showed it to Isaiah.
“See?” she narrated. “I love your class so much that I’m besties with the coolest girl in it.”
Isaiah was perplexed. She allowed the ensuing conversation to explain.
“Hello, darling daughter,” she said to the other end. “Did you thank Kimmy for letting you use her phone?”
Isaiah mimed an ‘ah-ha’ of recognition.
“Yes, I did,” said Mia’s voice. “And she said you need to get me a phone of my own.”
“She always says that.”
“She’s right.”
“Anyway,” Candice deflected her pursuit. “What’s up?”
“More time?”
“How much?”
“An hour.”
“Got it.”
“Cool. See you then.”
“Nice talking to you.”
“Love you.”
Candice said “I love you too,” but was pretty certain Mia hung up before she heard it.
“No, really…” she cradled her phone as she slid it back into her purse. “I love you so much, honey. There aren’t enough emojis on my keypad to express it.”
Isaiah chuckled.
“She’s still a good student,” he said. “Most of the kids I’ve seen morph into social butterflies kind of toss that aside, at least for a while.”
“Oh, I’m happy for her,” she clarified. “I’ve been hoping for this, for her to open up. But, you know…Kimmy.”
“Aw, come on, now,” he smiled. “She cracked the Artie case for you. Show your star whistleblower some love already.”
“Nothing came of it.”
“He’s on record now.”
“He should have been suspended.”
“That’s not on Kimmy.”
“If it was anyone else but her, we could have gotten a suspension.”
“Are you saying she was asking for it?”
“Let’s start with the skirts.”
“Look, Candice,” Isaiah turned up his seriousness. “Groping girls is either wrong or it isn’t.”
“I know, I know,” she apologized. “But it just feels like everything has to line up perfectly for Artie to face any discipline. And even then, who knows?”
Isaiah appeared to accept her point. He settled back and took in the surroundings once again. She assumed his next move would be to seize on Dale’s lack of leadership on the issue, which was there for the taking, or failing that, he would re-lighten the mood.
Instead he asked, “What if Mia started hanging out with Artie?”
She needed a moment to respond with something other than dumbfounded stammering.
“She wouldn’t.”
“Would you have thought she’d be buds with Kimmy at the beginning of the year?”
“It’s a phase.”
“Really?”
“Everything is at their age.”
“Ah…”
He extended his exclamation like a musical note that faded into a nod. She waited for the follow up, but he left it at that.
“Ah…what?” she prodded.
“If everything’s a phase, that means Artie is no more destined for a life of sexual assault than Kimmy and Mia are for a lifelong friendship.”
“Maybe he will be if no one does anything about it.”
“You’re right,” he caught himself getting too loud. “Absolutely right. So maybe we should stop hating Kimmy and Artie.”
“When you say ‘we’,” she joined him in slowing down the conversation in addition to lowering its volume, “do you mean that you hate them too, or is that a condescending teacher ‘we’?”
“They can make it hard not to sometimes,” he grinned.
Candice was grateful for the release of tension that had started to build, and as part of her relaxation, risked sharing too much.
“They rub their gifts in everyone’s faces,” she said. “They had nothing to do with their best attributes, but they flaunt them.”
“And we don’t want them to become adults who do the same thing, do we?” he added. “And I do mean ‘we’.”
&n
bsp; “No,” she emphasized.
“So we let them know they are more than what they inherited, don’t we?”
“Yes, teacher.”
“Nah,” he shook his head. “It’s not like that. We’re a team.”
She liked the sound of that, but made an effort not to read more into it.
“Meaning all of us,” she confirmed. “The whole school, it takes a village.”
“The whole enchilada,” he agreed, which brought Candice both relief and disappointment.
She shifted to the topic that she had wanted him to chase earlier.
“Have you had this talk with Dale?” she asked.
Isaiah exhaled.
“I never imagined it would be necessary.”
Candice didn’t expect to prod anything so troubling. Her most devious motive had been to illustrate the strength of their partnership by singling out a fraught teammate.
“He’s so good in so many ways,” she cushioned her criticism of Dale. “I’ve been up and down in my opinion since I met him. Mostly up.”
Isaiah seemed poised at the edge but still unsure whether to jump.
“I decided to work in charter schools for some pretty specific reasons,” he talked himself into it. “I wanted to see the country, do some more exploring. It was in my blood, I guess, from the way I was brought up. So I liked the idea of no tenure, a new contract every year, having an escape hatch even when I decided to settle on one school, just in case.”
She thought she did a good job of not looking concerned over what this meant for his future at Live Oak.
“And going along with that freedom theme, I liked not being under the thumb of the state. But now with this board we’ve got, with Rod Pluma and his dancing computers, I just wonder if we’re trading one thumb for another.”
She stopped worrying about his plans out of respect for his anxieties, and his willingness to share them with her.
“I agree with you about Dale,” he said. “He’s a good man. And I imagine Rod is too. But I don’t think they’re aware of what they’re doing to each other.”
Candice left him plenty of space to continue. When it was clear that he was done, she felt responsible for the dejection that draped his silence.
“It wouldn’t matter who was in charge if all teachers were like you,” she said.
He smiled just enough to let her know she had given him a decent shove out from under his apprehensions.
“Thank you, Candice.”
They watched Zoey knead the remaining slices of bread inside the bag into a big ball of dough. She tore big chunks from it and lobbed them into the murky water. The ducks had grown sluggish compared to their earlier frenzy, which Zoey had encouraged by tossing them tiny snippets to fight over. The constant reaching into the bag drained her as well, so the late amalgamation served them both. She was able to empty her supply with less motion, and small parties of ducks were able to feed off a single bread buoy. After launching the final glob, she announced “that’s that” with equal parts relief and exaltation.
She turned and ran toward their bench.
“Bag!” Candice reminded her.
Zoey took a sharp turn to the garbage can without missing a stride, then resumed her course, stopping directly in front of Isaiah.
“Do you like Mrs. Horst?” she asked him.
He beamed out of whatever remained of his slight funk.
“I don’t really know her,” he smiled. “But she acts nice at the teacher meetings we have. Do you like her?”
She threw her head backwards and forwards in a theatrical nod. Candice reached over and pulled her in for a hug.
“Zoey’s one of those students who always likes her teacher,” she said.
Candice then looked over her daughter’s shoulder at Isaiah and mouthed the words “I don’t.”
He restrained himself from laughing. Candice tried to get him to crack by adding barf signals and plunging her thumbs downward. She ceased fire the moment Zoey ejected from her hug with another question for Isaiah.
“Are you going to be my teacher when I’m in sixth grade?”
Isaiah inhaled a breath of diplomacy.
“We’ll see,” he said, then noticed Candice was also interested in his answer.
“I hope so,” he added for her benefit.
“Me too,” Zoey said. “Mia loves you, and she’s one of those students who never likes her teacher.”
Candice shrugged in Isaiah’s direction and gestured in Zoey’s, as if to say to him “there you have it.”
She would have liked to say more, but instead suggested they get a frozen yogurt on their way to pick up Mia.
She was about to invite Isaiah, but Zoey beat her to it. He politely declined, citing some work to be done. Candice was relieved that she wasn’t the one who asked, as it allowed for a more comfortable hug goodbye.
There were plenty of spaces, as usual, in the windswept parking lot of the browbeaten shopping center. Zoey recapped how much she loved her school as they walked amongst the tattered paper and cardboard products that skidded across the pavement. They sat at one of the rubber tables where Zoey rocked back and forth in an uneven chair while sharing all the good things she had heard about the teachers she would have as she made her way up the grades at Live Oak Charter Academy.
Candice reminded her every so often to keep eating her yogurt before it melted, but she was grateful to hear her daughter’s voice, feeling as though her own didn’t have much to say.